Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

Search This Blog

It is almost impossible to rate these relentlessly hip books – they are pure marmite*. The huge Introducing … series (a vast range of books covering everything from Quantum Theory to Islam), previously known as … for Beginners, puts across the message in a style that owes as much to Terry Gilliam and pop art as it does to popular science. Pretty well every page features large graphics with speech bubbles that are supposed to emphasise the point.

It is easy for the reader to get a little confused about which book to go for here as you can also choose Introducing Evolutionary Psychology and Introducing Darwin, the latter of which has significant overlaps with the current book. Of the two, I’d say this was probably the better choice for getting the basics of evolution – although both feature Darwin’s life and work, this covers the science better and makes better use of the illustrated ‘Introducing’ format.

The text flows nicely and the book works well as an introduction to the subject. It isn’t limited to the pure consideration of evolution by natural selection but also takes in the implications and the difficulties – so, for example, you will find quite a bit on altruism, which at first sight seems at odds with the concept of natural selection. I would have liked to see more on speciation, which is one of the areas of evolution that is less clear (even most creationists accept variations within species this way), and I was very surprised not to find a reference to evo devo (evolutionary development) in a book that is a lot more modern than the Darwin title.

The images are always important in one of these books and many of them here work well, though I found the ape-headed human used as a guide was a joke that became tired rather quickly. Overall a solid addition to the series though not an outstanding one.

*Marmite? If you are puzzled by this assessment, you probably aren’t from the UK. Marmite is a yeast-based product (originally derived from beer production waste) that is spread on bread/toast. It’s something people either love or hate, so much so that the company has run very successful TV ad campaigns showing people absolutely hating the stuff…

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This is a lovely little book that, sadly, not every reader will see the point of. If somebody’s anecdotal account of a presumed alien encounter is obviously a misperception of a mundane occurrence, or else too vague – or too far-fetched – to be taken seriously, then it’s all too easy to dismiss it as worthless. But that’s missing the point. The fact that so many incidents are reported in these terms makes the witnesses’ testimony worthy of serious study – to teach us, not about extraterrestrial civilisations, but about our own culture.

That was the core message of David Clarke’s excellent How UFOs Conquered the World published a couple of years ago. Now Clarke is back with another take on the same basic theme. His day job is Reader and Principal Lecturer in Journalism at Sheffield Hallam University, but for the last ten years he’s also acted as consultant for the National Archives project to release all of Britain’s official Ministry of Defence (MoD) files on UFOs. Throughout the Cold…

There's an engaging mix of powerful thriller and science fiction in this impressive novel. After the Earth has been rendered uninhabitable, human life is limited to vast space station. Our central character, Jack, has a symbiotic artificial intelligence, Hugo Fist, designed to destroy other AIs in a mysterious collective that is said to have committed an atrocity - but with a kick in the tail that because of an unbreakable contract, Fist will take over Jack's body in a few weeks' time.

Al Robertson packs remarkable technology concepts into the cyber side of this story, from AI corporations that act as a pantheon of gods to the 'puppet' that is Fist (he usually come across as a virtual cross between Mr Punch and an evil ventriloquist's dummy). Robertson does all the cyber stuff so well that it's easy to miss that this is, in effect, a myth in electronic clothing - you could substitute the myths of 'real' Greek gods and magic for what happens here. Alt…

This is a tasty little volume, packed with kitchen-based science. I must admit, when I saw that the author was the One Show's science expert and Marty Jopson's author photo has that 'Hey, I'm a mad scientist, kids!' look, my heart fell - I was sure the book would be the written equivalent of a 'Wow, look, aren't I clever, I can make this go bang!' science show - but, in fact, it's packed full of (appropriately) meaty scientific content.

I was really pleased that Jopson didn't stick purely to the chemistry of cooking, but launched with the working of some familiar kitchen gadgets - there was genuinely fascinating reading to be had about apparently humdrum equipment in the form of the physics and materials science of a knife and chopping board. And Jopson took us into industrial kitchens too, to reveal, for example, the remarkable process required to make puffed wheat.

Inevitably, the chemistry of cooking - how, for example, proteins denature and em…

Menu

About our editor

Author of Science for Life,The Quantum Age, Final Frontier, Dice World, Gravity, The Universe Inside You, Build Your Own Time Machine, Inflight Science, A Brief History of Infinity, The God Effect and more, Brian spends most of his time these days writing popular science books and giving talks.